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Frontiers of Engineering Reports on Leading-Edge Engineering from the 2009 Symposium (2010) / Chapter Skim
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The Kepler Mission: A Search for Terrestrial Planets--Riley Duren
Pages 23-26

The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.


From page 23...
... Smaller planets cannot maintain a life-sustaining atmosphere, and larger planets retain primordial atmospheres. The habitable zone for a given star is defined as the region in which orbiting planets have the potential for liquid surface water, a key building block of life.
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From page 24...
... The photometer is a Schmidt camera design consist ing of a graphite-cyanate ester metering structure, a sunshade, a 95 centimeter diameter Schmidt corrector, a 1.4 meter diameter primary mirror, field-flattening lenses, and an array of 42 charge-coupled devices (CCDs) with an active FOV greater than 100 square degrees.
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From page 25...
... Operations management of the Flight Segment, tactical mission planning, sequence validation, and engineering trend analyses are provided by a flight 2 Primary interest is on main-sequence dwarf stars, which are longer lived than giant stars and hence more likely to host habitable planets. In addition, transit signals from Earth-size planets are easier to detect around smaller stars, which have a larger obscuration ratio.
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From page 26...
... The NASA Ames Research Center, which provides mission management during science operations, led the development of the Ground Segment and is the home of the Science Principal Investigator and Science Operations Center. The Flight Segment was designed and built by the Ball Aerospace Technology Corporation.
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Key Terms

  • science operations
  • jet propulsion
  • propulsion laboratory
  • operations center
  • dwarf stars

  • mission management
  • mission planning
  • kepler mission
  • false positives
  • ball aerospace

  • target selection
  • ground segment
  • ames research
  • eclipsing binaries
  • positives caused

  • orbital alignment
  • nasa ames
  • orbital diameter
  • primary mirror
  • host stars

  • scientific focal
  • planetary target
  • science institute
  • telescope science
  • orbital period

  • centimeter diameter
  • approximately twice
  • occur approximately
  • statistically consistent
  • planet transiting


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